


(damn these) hungry times

by twoif



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Vampires, M/M, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:14:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/twoif
Summary: Just a little—of Kuroko—would taste so fine.
  They're walking Nigou by the streetball court on a Saturday afternoon and Kagami is complaining about basketball, and not getting to play in the rest of the interhigh, and basketball, and the general unfairness of basketball, when Kuroko says, "The thing is, the generation of miracles are vampires."





	

They're walking Nigou by the streetball court on a Saturday afternoon and Kagami is complaining about basketball, and not getting to play in the rest of the interhigh, and basketball, and the general unfairness of basketball, when Kuroko says, "The thing is, the generation of miracles are vampires."

Kagami drops his bottle of Pocari Sweat. It spills onto the pavement, and Nigou runs over to bat at the liquid, then skulks off when Kagami picks up the bottle and shoos him away. "What?"

"Vampires," Kuroko repeats. 

"Like—?" Kagami puts both hands up to his mouth, making fangs with his fingers. Kuroko looks at him, amused, as if he were the one who was suddenly speaking fluent bullshit. He mimics Kagami's gestures, and Kagami slaps at his hands, annoyed. "Stop that."

"Yes, like that. They take energy from anyone they can touch, as long as it's skin to skin." He walks over to Nigou and picks up his front paws, making him dance. Nigou complies, and with a creepy synchronicity that Kagami files away as more proof dogs are evil, they both turn toward Kagami at the same time, identical looks in their eyes. "Why else do you think Kaijou's captain almost fainted when he pulled Kise-kun up after the quarterfinals?"

"I don't know, maybe he was _tired_?" Kagami snaps. Kuroko opens his mouth, probably to say, _because Kise-kun sucked out his blood_ , but Kagami plows on. "Does _everyone_ know this?" 

"Of course," Kuroko says. "They're also called the _kisei no sedai_ , you know. Kise-kun told me that all of Kaijou had to get waivers from their parents before the school allowed him on the team."

"Is that why, you know," Kagami gestures again, helpless. "During Teikou, is that why they were so dominant? They could feed off each other?" 

"Oh, no, they can't drain from each other," Kuroko says, waving his hand as if the point is perfectly obvious. The point is not perfectly obvious to Kagami. "Anyway," Kuroko continues, "it wouldn't have made them all dominant. Because of the law of conservation of energy."

This too is not perfectly obvious to Kagami, who doesn't know what the law of conservation of energy is. But that explanation, he supposes, sounded no more ridiculous than anything else Kuroko has told him today. "Then what about you?"

Kuroko smiles, pulling Nigou to his chest, one hand patting the dirt off his knees. "No worries. I'm just a human."

In the afternoon sunlight, Kuroko looks totally normal — slight but solid, nothing supernatural, not even capable of the illusions he turns on the basketball court. The sun is a rich red against his face. Kagami swallows, thinking about Kuroko's skin, his smaller hands, the stern muscles of Kuroko's arms. "No, I mean, during Teikou. Did they feed off of you?"

Kuroko pauses. For a moment, his face hardens, and his smile is a mask. Kagami remembers Kuroko telling him last month that in Chinese legends, vampires were reanimated corpses, brought back from the dead to absorb others' life forces. _Hopping vampires_ , Kuroko had said, advancing in tiny bunny hops towards Kagami. It had been cute then. 

Now, Kuroko blinks. The illusion is broken. "No," he says very slowly. "In the end, they didn't feed off me either."

 

 

Two days later, they're sitting with the other freshmen polishing basketballs when Kagami reminds Kuroko, "You said 'in the end.'" 

Kuroko blinks. "Yes?" he says, in the tone of voice that Kagami knows means, _I'm not following you, but I'm indulging you because I'm not sure if you're bad at Japanese or just a little dumb_. 

_Use your words_ , Himuro's voice rings in Kagami's mind. Kagami bristles. He decides that after this, maybe next year, he'll make some friends who aren't always criticizing his ability to express himself verbally. "What about in the beginning? Did they feed off you then?"

Kuroko puts a clean ball in a crate, picks up another one. He spins it clumsily on one finger, two toddling rotations before it falls on his lap. "It's why I was promoted to first string," he says, not looking up.

For the second time this week, Kagami is floored. "What?" he barks. The ball he is polishing slips from his hands and rolls down the length of the court to Furihata, who throws it back to Kagami, a curious look on his face. 

Kuroko continues polishing. Calmly, like he's talking about the weather or today's history homework, he says, "When the rest of the team were first-years, they were still learning how to control their power, so they constantly needed little feedings. Aomine-kun was very picky. He hated the way the other first-string players, Haizaki-kun especially, tasted. So he found me, and in return, Akashi-kun promoted me to first string."

"And you _accepted_ that? Becoming first string as some kind of—" Kagami gapes, fingers squeezing at air. He settles on, "some kind of human battery pack," because _blood bank_ or _bait_ sounds even worse.

"Well," Kuroko says, still looking at the ball in his hand, a stubborn set to his jaw, "and then I learned misdirection."

In the silence, Kagami can hear the other first-years half a court away, Kawahara making a joke and Fukuda laughing uproariously. Furihata says something about a girl in another class, sending Fukuda off some rant that both Kawahara and Furihata snicker at. Kuroko keeps moving his hand across the surface of his basketball, obsessively tracing the black lines, over and over, like a mantra or a penance. It's clean, Kagami thinks, _you can't clean it anymore than you already have_. He wants to grab Kuroko's hands. Pull them into his own lap, hold them still. 

He doesn't.

 

 

They meet Murasakibara at a streetball tournament, with Himuro in tow. "You look so serious as always," Murasakibara says, stretching his giant hand towards Kuroko's head. "It makes me want to suck you dry."

"But you won't," Kuroko says, slapping his hand away. 

"Yeah, I guess with that attitude, I can't," he says, grinning, and opens a bag of chips.

Later, as they change out of their wet uniforms, Kagami peers at Kuroko's face from under a towel and asks, "What did he mean back there, that he can't with that attitude?"

"They can only take from someone who's willing," Kuroko says. He strips off his wet t-shirt. His skin is pale, almost paper white, even against the white cotton of his towel and his button-down. Kagami feels the blood rising in his face. He presses the damp fabric of his own t-shirt to his cheeks, counting to ten as Kuroko continues, "That's how the generation of miracles is still allowed to play basketball. No taking from your opponents if you accidentally touch them, that kind of thing."

Kagami snorts. "I'm not sure that's any better. It's still, you know, being a vampire."

"You don't think it's teamwork?" 

"No, I think it's _cheating_. They're using something that's not theirs to win."

Kiyoshi hums thoughtfully. "If you think of ability or energy as a fixed set on a team, it's more redistribution than anything," he says. He makes a box with his fingers, then breaks them apart, fanning them out as if to illustrate a point that is completely lost on Kagami. 

Kuroko, on the other hand, nods. "Midorima-kun used to say that it was the law of conservation of energy."

"Fine," Kagami huffs, because he still doesn't know what the law of conservation of energy is. "Fine, but even _then_ , it's still cheating to use magical vampire powers when the rest of us can't."

"Would Kagami-kun say it's any different than being born tall or having long arms? Why?"

"Because, I don't know, it just is," Kagami says, grumbling. Kiyoshi laughs, throwing his wet towel on Kagami's head and ruffling his hair, much to Kagami's annoyance. 

A few minutes later, Riko texts Kagami, ordering the team to come back to school. They head into the station and wait together at the edge of the platform, listening to the heavy rain and Furihata and Fukuda idly doing impressions of Murasakibara. Kagami thinks hard, but can't come up with a better way to phrase what he wants to know. So he nudges Kuroko on the shoulder and asks, "When one of those guys feeds off of you, does it hurt?"

In the shadow of the platform roof, Kuroko's eyes are two bright points, like wet stones catching the momentary flash of passing headlights. When they focus on Kagami, Kagami can almost hear them adjusting, refocusing on the present — the station, their wet clothes, Kagami's towering presence. Kagami's teeth itch. He wants, suddenly, to eat something that he can hold steady with two hands, something he can tear strips away from like a dog. It's a stupid thought.

"No," Kuroko says. "It feels like—" he furrows his forehead. A bead of rain travels from his hairline, bypasses his eyebrow, and curves down his jaw. Kagami watches it, fascinated. "Relief, I suppose. Like a great weight I didn't know I had been carrying is being lifted off my shoulders and I can breathe easy. "

 _No wonder you confused it for teamwork_ , Kagami thinks sourly. He turns away, stuffing his towel into his bag. "Sounds creepy," he says. "Like some insect that drugs its prey before eating it."

"A spider?" Kuroko laughs. Kagami scowls, but Kuroko wraps cold fingers around one of Kagami's wrist, startling him. "I'd be willing if it was Kagami-kun," he says. It's not soothing. "It wouldn't be creepy then."

The silence passes. The cold spreads up Kagami's arm, seemingly all the way into his mouth, a different kind of poison. His throat is numb. He doesn't taste anything. "Sorry, no dice," he mutters.

"Too bad," Kuroko says with a small smile, and lets go.

They go back to Seirin, where Momoi collapses on Kuroko, wet from the rain and crying. Aomine has injured his knees, he hates her now, what should she do, she wails, both hands fisted in Kuroko's shirt. "Don't tell me," he says, patting her gently on the head but narrowing his eyes, "he's not refusing to feed again, is he?"

She shakes her head. "I don't think he has been touching his teammates, or anyone, since interhigh started," she admits. 

"Even in the match against Kise-kun?"

"I knew this would happen," she says in between great big sobs. "I knew he'd do this to himself."

"If it's such a big deal, why don't you just let him feed off you?" Kagami asks, which sets off another crying jag that Kuroko, glaring daggers at Kagami the whole time, has to smooth over. 

No delicacy, the Seirin team pronounces later, turning on Kagami as soon as Kuroko, Momoi, and Nigou disappear into the darkness of the school campus on a weekend night. "I don't know what I said wrong though," he complains. 

"Don't worry," Koganei says, thumping him on the back. "No one ever does, with girls."

"The generation of miracles," Izuki says, "they're a real _drain_ , aren't they?"

Kagami doesn't laugh. 

 

 

They play Jousei and win. Kagami makes the last dunk from an impossible distance across the court and falls backwards onto the floor just in time for the buzzer. Kuroko looms over him, panting, a shock of white in more white, cut off at the wrists by black, nobody's vision of an athlete and someone's vision of a specter. "You're falling over quite often today, Kagami-kun," he says, reaching for Kagami's hand.

"Shut up," Kagami grunts, grinning. He clasps Kuroko's hand as Kuroko, arm trembling, tries to pull him up. 

And then it happens. Vanilla, mostly. Unripe melon and too-ripe pears. Ozone. Carbonation. Macerated cherries. Kagami springs back, horrified, and trips on his own foot, skidding back to the ground. "Kagami-kun?" Kuroko asks, eyebrows knitted. 

"It's nothing, just slipped, sweaty hands," he mumbles. Hesitates, then puts both hands on the ground to push himself up instead. Just a fluke, he thinks, and licks his lips. Riko was always saying if they didn't eat enough, their bodies would burn protein, and it would taste sweet. Ketosis. The body eating itself. But he feels fine now, stronger than before, his legs no longer shaking as he stands. A bead of sweat slips into his mouth and he relishes the salt. He can feel Kuroko scrutinize him, a weight he hadn't realized he was carrying until now. "I'm fine," he says again, and clenches his fist.

 

 

They play Shuutoku and tie. They play Kirisaki Daiichi and win. They go to a hot springs resort and Touou is there and no one tells Kagami or Kuroko, so they're blindsided when Kuroko, on his way back from a game of ping pong with Kagami, turns the corner, runs headfirst into Aomine, and collapses in a dead faint. Kagami, who had been returning the paddles, finds them a few minutes later, Kuroko laid out on a bench, a wet towel over his face, and Aomine standing over him, scowling and furiously swishing with a mouthful of Mets. 

"What the hell is going on?" Kagami asks. "Kuroko, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Kuroko says, sitting up. "We just ran into each other."

"It's been a while, hasn't it, Tetsu," Aomine says, taking another swig of his drink. "Fuck, I hate vanilla."

In the corner of his eye, Kagami thinks he sees Kuroko flinch, a tightening around his eyes and mouth that disappears the minute Kagami looks at him properly. "Really, nothing happened," Kuroko insists. 

Kagami rounds on Aomine, who cocks an eyebrow as if to say, _what he said._ Annoyed at being left out, Kagami slings his arm around the back of Aomine's neck, and Aomine throws him off, splashing Kagami with soda in the process. They bicker about the Winter Cup, and Kagami crushes Aomine's soda can and throws it at him, which is childish, and Aomine buys another can of soda, shakes it up, and sprays it at Kagami's face, which is even more childish, and then Riko and Momoi find the three of them and they're all forced to seiza for an hour while they get scolded. Kuroko sits at Kagami's side, very still. Eventually Kagami realizes he has been dozing the whole time. He smells like grapefruit and sugar and faintly of watermelon rinds. When it's time to wake him up Kagami is careful to touch his clothed back. He thinks he feels the weight of Aomine watching them from across the room. When Kuroko blinks drowsily up at him, pushing his hand away, he thinks he can taste it.

"Did he make you—?" Kagami mutters as they troop off for dinner. 

"He can't _make_ me. That's not how it works," Kuroko says, and adds, a little defensively, "It's just that we've been careful to avoid this for a while now, so it was unexpected."

"What, fighting?"

For one hot second when they were in junior high, Alex had convinced Himuro to take up religion, and Himuro had dragged Kagami to a church every Sunday for a month. It was a small Episcopalian outfit, and there had been a painting of seraphims on the wall, their eyes boring into the pews during the sermons. Kagami thinks of them now, Kuroko's face like a wrathful vision painted in stark colors, emerging from orange clouds and six wings. "No," Kuroko says, enunciating each syllable with terrible clarity, "touching."

 _It has to be willing,_ Kagami remembers. He doesn't ask anything else after that. 

That evening Kagami leaves for the states and doesn't tell Kuroko goodbye. Riko waits with him for the taxi that will take him to the train station, her arms crossed, suspicious. "You want to tell me what's wrong?" she asks. 

"Nothing's wrong," he tells her. 

"Uh-huh," she says, but doesn't push it. She hands him a can of coffee, still warm. He pulls the tab on the coffee, brings it to his mouth. It's vanilla-flavored, he realizes, and gags, but drinks all of it in one long swallow. 

 

 

In L.A. he sees Alex for the first time in years. She greets him with a bag of In-N-Out burgers hanging off one hand. "Give me a hug," she growls, pressing sloppy kisses to his mouth and both temples. Which is when he tastes her, unmistakable in the dry air of the airport: crushed red chilis, butterfat, bruised grass, a high note of burnt sugar and coffee beans. Reeling, he breaks off the hug, and he swears he hears their bodies separating with a click and a buzz, like a socket shorting out. 

"Man, driving here took more out of me than I thought," Alex says, reaching into the bag of food. "I'm exhausted."

 _Goddamn it,_ he thinks, and makes sure not to touch her fingers when she hands him a burger. 

He plays better than he ever has in those weeks with her. He tries to avoid touching her, but she's always in sports tanks, tank tops, no pants and just underwear, worming her way into his blankets and wrapping around him while they eat, like an overly affectionate anaconda. The taste of her, all char and herbs, courses through him like a stream filling a canyon fissure, tiny but constant, wearing him down to her shape. Each time they high-five he's overcome by a helpless, overwhelming love for her, so strong and unnatural he almost cries when she sends him off for his flight back to Tokyo. "Take this with you, as a good luck charm," she says, giving him a wet smack on the cheek as he checks his luggage one last time.

"I will," he promises her, and does. 

 

 

He gets back just in time for the first game of the Winter Cup. Akashi descends from a flight of stairs, regal and insane, wielding a pair of scissors like he's in a Zatoichi film and Kagami is some nameless henchman about to get skewered. Kagami thinks, _that's what comes of being the king of vampires_ , then shakes that thought away in a cold sweat. It's Aomine he needs to focus on, Aomine who eyes him during the handshake lineup and tells him, almost knowingly, "You've changed."

He wonders what it's like when Aomine touches Kise, or Midorima, or even Akashi. Can they taste everyone else through each other? If he shook Aomine's hand, will Aomine know? Kagami is sure Aomine would pick out Kuroko under any circumstance, an errant thread of light blue in Kagami's bloodstream. But the game starts and Aomine doesn't say anything else about it, just alley-oops the first points of the game. "Slow," he sneers at Kagami when he lands on his feet. "You just got here?"

They play, rapid unpredictable basketball, starts and fits and Kuroko slowly sputtering out, like a flame that doesn't have enough thread to keep a candle lit. By the second quarter, Riko is forced to call a timeout. "I'm switching you out, Kuroko-kun," she says, and Kuroko slumps in his chair, his body a snapped thread. That tiny neck, that tiny back, Kagami thinks, awed. He'd let it carry him for so long he'd forgotten how small it was. Kuroko, a flaming sword in the hands of a painted angel, a body too frail to carry out its owner's demands. If only passion alone could build new muscle and bone, if only it were possible to want so hard it could make wanting into flesh—

 _He's willing_ , Kagami's body tells him. _He said it'd be okay, if it was you._

The timeout is over. Kagami gets up. He feels it in the back of his throat, the desire to tear into something, to swallow something too big to chew, to consume. He touches Kuroko's shoulder, right where the edge of the sleeve flutters against bare skin. Kuroko is hot with sweat and anger. This time Kagami is ready, and he rides the feeling: vanilla milkshake, the cold of a popsicle on a summer afternoon, a melon soda bursting in his hands, and then something cold and searing under that — iron, the tannic tang of unripe persimmons, exhaust.He is filled with it, his legs strong and heavy, his feet light enough to carry him in the air. He is a vessel, and Kuroko pours into him, hungry and possessive, almost too much to bear.

Kuroko raises his head in shock. He grabs Kagami's wrist, eyes wide, and gives a small shake of his head as if to say, _are you sure?_

Kagami smiles. He is sure. How, he wonders, had Aomine ever turned his back on this? Kuroko was right, he thinks. There can be no teamwork more intimate than this. He squeezes Kuroko's shoulder, just to feel it pulsate, alive in his palm. It lingers in his hand, a sugar-laced spark. "This time, leave it to me," he says, and turns towards the court. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- ty as always to gluedol for the beta  
> \- kisei = parasite  
> \- am i proud of izuki's joke? you betcha.  
> \- Written as part of KagaKuro Week 2016 (Extension Day 2: candy).


End file.
